I ♥ NY

When I began working in New York 3½ years ago and told my new boss how much I liked being in the city, he said to me, “It’ll get old fast.” As a New York native with fond childhood memories, I didn’t think being in the city could ever get old.

I was right. In fact, I fell in love with New York all over again.

I fell in love with the diverse group of fascinating people in New York, each with their own stories and reasons for being in the city. I sometimes stopped to talk to a few of them, including the Mexican man on 48th Street and 6th Avenue holding a sign advertising a nearby Irish bar, and the African man wearing a sandwich board for a discount clothier on 5th Avenue near 49th Street.

I became familiar with some of the people behind the counters of many of the inexpensive eateries in midtown, including the Asian-featured man with the Spanish accent who takes pride in the salads he prepares at the deli on Madison Avenue between 48-49 Streets, or the cheery group of Latinos at Margon on 46 Street between 6-7 Avenues who always seemed happy to see me when I stopped in for lunch once or twice a month.

I fell in love with the buildings and scenery of Manhattan, which makes a fascinating backdrop for the workers, residents and tourists that occupy it. I enjoyed walking around Rockefeller Center, watching the ice skaters and seeing the Christmas tree, rarely being annoyed with the crowds. I was wasn't bothered by tourists in Grand Central Terminal standing in the middle of rushing commuters in order to take pictures of the historic ceiling.

Bryant Park, a chameleon of an oasis where sun worshippers relax in the summer and ice skaters glide through the chill in the winter, was often the highlight of my walk back to the Port Authority Bus Terminal at the end of the day. Other times, it was Times Square or the theater district, both of which looked like oil paintings after a rain, that punctuated my day. If it was pouring at the end of the day, the crowded subway, with its own subculture, was a fascinating option.

I took advantage of being able to stand in the back of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on 5th Avenue, or sit in a pew of the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle on Columbus Avenue and 59th Street, and quietly thank God for all the blessings in my life.

Working in the city enabled me to watch Mariah Carey, Katy Perry and others perform outside the Today show studios, take in a few more Broadway shows than normal, attend some midweek Mets and Rangers games, participate in a few Jets playoff rallies, and stand a few feet away from Bono and Henry Kissinger, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former mayors David Dinkins and Ed Koch, Governor David Paterson and former governor George Pataki. Actually, I’m sure I crossed paths with many celebrities – I just didn’t know who they were. I doubt, however, they were much more interesting than the countless working people who found themselves with me in the city, by choice, by birth, or both, most days.

It’s these kinds of people, and the gorgeous landscape in which they operate daily, that I will miss most when my current work situation officially ends next week. New York isn’t going anywhere, though, so I’ll look forward to returning to play, eat, sightsee or, perhaps, work…and certainly, I'll be reminded what it is about the city I love so much.

Mother’s Day card

To someone who won’t be needing to buy a Mother’s Day card for the first time in their life, the subject lines on some recent emails are haunting, if not painful:

“Mom's the word”

“Make this Mother's Day memorable with gift ideas from ShopRite”

“There's Still Time! Save 20% & Get Mom Something Special”

“Shop our Mother's Day Gift Guide. (While Mom's not looking.)”

“Save 25% Sitewide & Make Mom :)”

“Show Mom She Raised You With Good Taste”

“Great gifts for Mom under $300 + 25% off”

“LAST Chance: FREE Shipping/NO Service Charge for Mother's Day!”

“30 Tulips for $30: Mom Deserves The BEST!”

“AAA e-Update: Mother's Day Deals, Spring Getaways & much more”

“Mother's Day Brunch: The Perfect Gift!”

“Perfect Gifts For Every Mom On Your List!”

“Mother's Day Gift Guide”

“Shop Our Favorite Picks for Mother's Day”

“$450 worth of Mother's Day savings!”

“Give Mom a Daisy from Marc Jacobs”

“Send A Sweet Note to Mom, get a Free Gift! Details Inside.”

“Sweet! 2 Dozen Roses, FREE Vase & Free Cookies for Mom ♥ Save Over 40%”

“Mom’s Day Brunch Ideas”

“Gift Pack and Free Shipping – Just in Time for Mom”

“The best Mother's Day gifts come in Coach boxes”

“Massage and Pedicure Package for Mother's Day”

“We miss you! Save an extra 20% off gifts for Mom + Free Shipping.”

“Mother's Day musts: 30% off cardigans & jewelry”

“You're Invited! Celebrate Mother's Day Party This Saturday!”

“Spoil Mom with Surprises! Plus 15% Savings for You”

“Great Gifts for Mom + 2012 Draft Cap for You”

“Make Mom's Day with $20 Off NOOK Color or Simple Touch!”

“Mother's Day is May 13th - Send our fresh and flavorful gifts”

“Celebrate Mother's Day in style with Lauren by Ralph Lauren”

“One Great Mom”

“Get exactly what you wish for this Mother's Day”

The former statement, “One Great Mom,” certainly rings true when I think of my mother, Elena, and all she did for me, especially during the challenging times for our family in New York City during the 1960s. But, the latter statement, “Get exactly what you wish for this Mother’s Day,” will never happen again for this son. I just want to hug and kiss her and tell her again, “I love you, mom. Gracias por todo.”

Through the past with the Rolling Stones

Struggling through the first half hour of a cardio class on a stationery bike in a local gym, I suddenly feel a jolt of energy when hearing the distinct guitar sound at the start of “Paint It, Black,” the Rolling Stones hit from 1966. I smile, and pedal faster.
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Just days earlier, while riding an elevator with a co-worker known for his liking of the Rolling Stones, a middle-age businessman asked if the band might be touring again this year.

“I don’t think so,” his colleague, a white-haired attorney, replied. “I don’t think the four of them will be able to do it until 2013.”

“But, they’ll be a year older,” the man remarked, disappointed.
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A New York City boy first heard “Paint It, Black” on an AM radio station, and went to a music store on Broadway to look for the single. A year earlier, in his neighborhood’s recreation center, he and his friends enjoyed listening to “Get Off My Cloud” over and over and over again.
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Shortly after the first Super Bowl telecast ended one Sunday in January 1967, the Rolling Stones appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. They sang “Ruby Tuesday” and, in deference to Mr. Sullivan’s wishes, a slightly different version of the flip side of the single, “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” It was better than the game, and soon a young New Yorker made his way to a local Woolworth to buy the disc.

Almost 40 years later, during halftime of another Super Bowl, the Rolling Stones performed a 14-minute set that, again, turned out to be more entertaining than the game. Proving some things just never change, two of the three Stones songs had lyrics censored by the television network.
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The album with the zipper on the cover, “Sticky Fingers,” couldn’t make it past the censor of a Bloomfield, NJ family in 1971, around the same time the famous tongue graphic became synonymous with the Rolling Stones and started appearing in shirts and other clothing.

Four years later, in Madison Square Garden, the band’s on stage and it’s one of those nights. As the opening licks of “Honky Tonk Women” sounded, the stage opened slowly with a band member at the tip of each point of a star-shaped structure. Life was never quite the same for a college student.

In 1981, at a Meadowlands Arena concert, Mick Jagger dashes up the aisle during a song, just feet away from a newlywed couple. Nearly everyone is up from their seats at the new arena, excited.
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New Rolling Stones discs have come less frequently since the mid-1980s, as have concert tours, as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards occasionally bitch in public like siblings or lovers and do their own things. The quality of Stones recordings and performances, however, have never abated – their discs and tours during the past 25 years stand up well to their earlier work.

One more Rolling Stones concert remains on my bucket list. No doubt, it will make me smile and feel like that young New York boy at the neighborhood recreation center, at the Broadway music store, in front of the TV after the first Super Bowl, or the young man at Madison Square Garden or Meadowlands Arena.

Newark Penn Station, Saturday, 8 p.m.

The game up the hill behind them, but the next train more than 30 minutes ahead of them, the basketball fans settled inside the bar in the lobby of Newark Penn Station. A couple wearing blue strode in quietly and found stools in the back of the bar, across from a group of loud men wearing red. In the corner, a man wearing blue punched his jacket, out of frustration or anger.

The bartender did her best to take care of her patrons, quickly drafting beers into frosty glasses and occasionally mixing drinks. The blue-clad couple ordered glasses of wine.

“The bartender reminds me of Sharmila,” the man sipping wine said. “Look at her and listen to her accent. I bet you she’s from Trinidad.”

“I thought she was Hispanic,” his lady companion replied.

More people entered the bar. Most were dressed in red and seemed happy at their team’s improbable win, a victory that was insignificant to them from a practical perspective. The loss by their in-state rival, however, was potentially damaging to the team’s post-season prospects. Three 60ish-year old men in blue, one of whom looked tall enough to have played college basketball in the late 1960s, talked softly among themselves.

The lone African-American man at the bar stepped out, probably to use the bathroom across the hall. He returned a few minutes later and reclaimed his seat among the red-clad white men. As improbable as it could be for a black man in Newark, New Jersey, he stood out inside the bar with his black leather jacket and black leather hat in a sea of red, blue and white.

A few minutes later a thin man with sandy-colored hair and stubby growth on his ruddy face shuffled into the bar. Seeing him, the bartender drafted a glass of beer.

“Jimmy, sit here, not there,” she said, pointing to a corner of the bar with a few empty stools. He didn’t seem to hear her as he slowly made his way to a nearby spot.

“Sit here, not there,” she repeated, holding the frosty beer of glass. He sat where she didn’t want him to anyway. She sighed, and put the beer in front of him.

Within a few more moments, the bar was full. A group of young women, not dressed in red or blue but looking as if they could have just graduated from one of the rival colleges, made their way to the back and stood by patiently.

“In a few minutes the train is going to come and this bar will be nearly empty,” the woman sipping wine said. “She’s finally going to get a chance to slow down and catch her breath.”

As most people around the bar began finishing their drinks, the couple in blue took their last sips of wine and quietly made their way past the men in red and out the door.

Eulogy for my mom, Elena

The following is an excerpt from the eulogy Charley delivered today for his mother, Elena Bruns, who passed away on January 15, 2012, in a New York hospital after complications from heart surgery.

By many standards, my mother was considered an ordinary woman. By some, she was considered extraordinary. To me, of course, she was a very special, unique person.

She was born into an ordinary middle class family in Cuba, and received a normal education for girls growing up there in the 1940s. She did not possess the kinds of special talent or skills that were in particular demand in return for a strong livelihood. Her jobs included being a clerk and a cashier. Despite her passion for pictures, she struggled with a digital camera, and never learned to use a computer.
 
But she was extraordinary in other ways. My mother’s father passed away when she was four years old, and she joined her mother in this country as a teenager, several years before the Cuban revolution forced thousands of her compatriots to flee the island. She settled in the Upper West Side of Manhattan along with some other Cubans from the Mambo Kings era. She certainly wasn’t wild and crazy – she never drank alcohol or smoked anything – but she sure could dance. After her divorce, I remember how she would practice dancing with new boyfriends in our apartment living room. If her boyfriend didn’t cut it on a dance floor, a second date was unlikely. That made Roy very special. He wasn’t a particularly nimble dancer, but they had a second date and then some.

My mom studied hard to learn English, insisting that my brother and I speak it at home so that we could all become fluent. And she succeeded to the point that, by the end of her life, I think she spoke it as well or better than Spanish, despite her strong accent.

My mom also had the extraordinary ability of squeezing 15 or 20 cents out of every dime she had. Growing up, we somehow managed to obtain everything we needed because she always got items at a steep discount or for free. Absolutely nothing, including food and clothes, was wasted in our home. Her way with money was a major reason why she and my dad were able to enjoy having two new houses built for them.
 
My mom was unique. She may not have seemed the warm, bubbly type of Cuban that my grandmother, my aunt, and other women I knew in the family while growing up appeared to be. But, I never doubted her love for me, or how special she made me feel. I will always remember when on her birthday, not mine, she took me, my big brother and her little brother to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. She always managed to find the gifts I wanted most for Christmas, to get a good spot on Central Park West to watch the Thanksgiving Day parade, and buy some tickets to see the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall.

She was very proud of delivering four children into this world. Her youngest child, and only daughter, was born while I was a sophomore in high school. My mom was beaming the day she left the hospital holding my sister. I remember my classmates asking me for weeks, “Hey Charley, was that your mother who just had a baby?” “Yeah,” I admitted, “that was my mom who just had a little girl.”

My mom was fortunate to learn how to cook traditional Cuban food from her mother. Our family could never figure out how she made her yellow rice and chicken look and taste perfect. She went through much trouble to get the right ingredients to cook with red beans. The taste of her black beans could not be beat although, fortunately for me, she was able to teach my wife how to prepare them just right.
 
After my grandmother passed away 20 years ago, my mom had a big void in her life. She missed her mother very much, and rarely went long without talking about her. Just recently she said to me, “Do you realize Belen would’ve been 100 years old this year?” Ironically, it was exactly 100 years ago today that her mom was born.

Now it’s my turn to have a big void in my life. But, just as my mom made sure I never forgot all the great qualities of her mom and the special times we shared together, I am determined to make sure my family, including my dad, my brothers, sister, children, nephews and niece, never forget her great qualities and the special times we shared together with her.

NYC Christmas images

Chestnuts roasting in the food cart on the southeast corner of 43rd Street and 6th Avenue. Not quite on an open fire, but with the same aroma many people associate with the Christmas holidays.

A child in a stroller excitedly points to an object above the southwest corner of 44th Street and 5th Avenue. The woman pushing him acknowledges his words, saying with a foreign accent, "Clock. Yes, clock!"

People, some of them dressed up and walking quickly, others dressed down and moving slowly, hold bags of gifts.

Men greet each other with handshakes and begin talking. Women hug good-bye after a meal.

A guy steps out of a taxi in front of the Met Life Building on 45th Street and squeezes a $5 bill into the red bucket next to a Salvation Army worker who breaks the rhythm of his bells only for a second to say "Thank you." A few feet away, a newspaper vendor sits quietly, with few customers.

On 5th Avenue near 48th Street, a man walks past a deformed woman sitting on the sidewalk, then turns around to give her money. Several blocks uptown, a guy pulls out a pack of chips from a lunch bag and gives it to a beggar.

Two New York Police Department officers, one a man the other a woman, smile while posing for pictures with tourists, the Times Square crowd behind them.

Digital cameras capture image after image of the bright lights of Times Square, the big tree at Rockefeller Center, the marquee outside Radio City Music Hall, the skaters at Bryant Park, the elegant white lights of the Chrysler Building and the colorful lighting on the Empire State Building.

Sometimes, though, it's minds that capture images of Christmas in New York City and digitizes them in words.

Santacon comes to town

The timing could not have been more ironic. On Friday night, Yes, Virgina, an animated Christmas special set in New York in 1897, aired on network television. On Saturday, Santacon, an excuse for as many as 1400 characters in Santa Claus suits to party, played out across New York City’s bars and streets.

I realized something strange was afoot when I saw a tall guy dressed like Santa Claus walking in Penn Station. He looked like he could stuff a bag of toys down a chimney just by standing on the tips of his toes. Instead, he dutifully purchased a ticket back to Long Island, presumably en route to the North Pole where elves and reindeer are finalizing preparations for another Christmas Eve.

Moments later, I saw groups of red-suited white-bearded people on subway cars. Sightings of Santas, some of them women with very short skirts under their short red and white coats, continued on the East Side in the early evening. Riding a cab along Second Avenue hours later, I saw groups of Santa Claus lookalikes hanging outside a number of bars.

According to its web site, the New York City Santacon event “is a non-denominational, non-commercial, non-political and non-sensical Santa Claus convention that occurs once a year for absolutely no reason.” There was some revelry around town, for sure, but no Santa arrests, according to a newspaper report. A tweet stated, though, that police prevented Santas from occupying the red bleachers in Times Square, saying, “You can’t stay here.”

Santa is not Superman, however, and some of the red-suited characters I saw at Penn Station as midnight approached seemed ready to turn into pumpkins. They sat on the floor, glazed eyes half-shut, slumped by their companions, as if they were thinking, “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

If an 8-year-old child witnessed the Santacon spectacle, what would they say? If a newspaper editor was challenged by a child to explain whether Santa Claus is real, what would they write? “Yes, Virginia, there is a…Santacon.”